


Cut the World in Two

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Sharing a Bed, s08e04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 07:44:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18868819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: Courtesy is a lady’s armor.How many times had Sansa repeated those words to herself? As a reminder in King’s Landing. As a caution in the Vale. As a prayer with Ramsay. At some point, her armor ceased to be something that kept danger out and grew into something that kept Sansa herselfin. She hadn’t realized just how much until she was able to shed that armor with Jon. He’d weathered her tempers and her moods, her bitterness and resentment. It shames her now to remember how she’d subjected him to more of her thorniness than he deserved, especially at first. Only it had been a relief so deep as to be almost pleasurable, to be able to unleash everything inside her and know it would be seen, measured, accepted. That he would never harm her or turn her away, no matter how ugly her behavior might become.





	Cut the World in Two

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the feast in S08E04

It’s the last way Sansa could ever have expected to feel.

She’s been wary of Daenerys – and Jon’s obvious feelings for her – since they arrived in Winterfell and she’d seen the light in his eyes when he introduced them to one another, a light unlike any she’d ever seen in him before, even when they were children and still untroubled by the weight of the world itself.

That light had been gone when Jon knocked on her door, long after Sansa left the victory feast. She should have been asleep but her head was too full of all she’d seen and done, of everything still to come. It made her restless, snappish, so she’d spoken more harshly than she intended when she opened her door to find him there, head down, listing a bit to one side as if it took too much effort to stand up straight.

“I thought you’d be with your dragon queen,” she’d said. His answering laugh was little more than an exhalation, more the sound of exhaustion escaping his lips than amusement. His mouth had curved into a half smile, but his eyes stayed on the floor, and Sansa knew at once that something had gone wrong between the two of them, something outside the reach of war or victory or crowns.

She would have thought she’d feel satisfied, relieved. Instead, her heart broke for him, all at once like an earthenware bowl thrown to the hard stone floor, and she stepped aside in a wordless invitation to enter.

Sansa, after all, knows what it is to have hope die.

They sit before the fire in her room and talk of little nothings, Sansa in her favorite upholstered chair and Jon on a footstool he’d hooked with one foot and pulled close. She’d poured him a glass of wine when they sat, but he hasn’t drunk from it at all, merely held it between his hands. They don’t speak of the battle. Someday she’ll tell him how frightened she was, how she hid at first until she found her bravery. He wouldn’t judge her for hesitating, he wouldn’t say she waited too long, wouldn’t even think it to himself. He always sees her as the best of herself, even when she’s not able to. What he saw during the fighting, what he did, she still isn’t sure, but she knows she’ll learn. When he’s ready to tell. 

She doesn’t ask him about Daenerys. She knows he wouldn’t say anyway. Perhaps it’s selfish, but that’s how Sansa prefers it. Daenerys, for all her help, is still an intrusion, one Sansa resents having to rely on. Still, she’s grateful to Daenerys. It’s another thing to resent.

It had been hard when it was just the two of them, so hard, but it had also been simple. Their paths had been clear, their fates knotted together like rope. For all the looming danger, it had somehow been safe, safer than she’d felt since the first moment she left Winterfell. The Sansa she once was could never have imagined how much such a thing would mean to her someday, not needing to run or hide or feign courtesies. _Courtesy is a lady’s armor._ How many times had Sansa repeated those words to herself? As a reminder in King’s Landing. As a caution in the Vale. As a prayer with Ramsay. At some point, her armor ceased to be something that kept danger out and grew into something that kept Sansa herself _in_. She hadn’t realized just how much until she was able to shed that armor with Jon. He’d weathered her tempers and her moods, her bitterness and resentment. It shames her now to remember how she’d subjected him to more of her thorniness than he deserved, especially at first. Only it had been a relief so deep as to be almost pleasurable, to be able to unleash everything inside her and know it would be seen, measured, accepted. That he would never harm her or turn her away, no matter how ugly her behavior might become.

So he’d born the brunt of it, her fear, her sadness, her anger. But never her loneliness; that she’d kept from him. She thinks now that she always knew it could consume her if she gave it the slightest voice. And oh, she’s so lonely, lonelier than she’s ever been, even with her family all around her. It steals through her like frost, spreading beneath her skin and making her so brittle she thinks she could snap in two at the barest pressure. Sansa almost wishes she were a little girl again, so she could freely crawl into Jon’s lap and have him hold her until the chill in her bones seeped away. 

“Your hair wants a bath,” she says. She lifts her hand, testing the feel of the hair that straggles loose at his nape between her fingers. “I could wash it for you. Your bandages need to stay dry.” She starts to rise, grateful for something to _do_ to dissipate the untidy knot of emotions crowding her chest, but he stays her with a hand around hers.

“I’m fine.”

Sansa looks at him, searching his face for some kind of truth. “Are you?” she asks. “Truly?”

Jon’s smile is rueful. He knows what she asks. “Aye.” He hesitates, his brow creasing into thought. Sansa waits. Sometimes Jon simply needs room before he can speak. It’s frustrated her a thousand times, but she finds it endearing now, how not even the world nearly ending could change his ways. 

“It seems anticlimactic somehow,” he admits at last. “Defeating the White Walkers, fighting the Night King… That’s been my life for so long.” His hand, still holding hers, tightens, and he gives his head an impatient shake. “I’m proud of Arya. Of course I am. It just feels…”

“Unfinished,” Sansa supplies after he trails off. He looks at her and nods slowly, something like relief crossing his face. Relief at being understood, at being _seen_ , at saying to her something he might never say to anyone else. It’s a feeling she understands.

“Yes.”

Sansa moves forward on her chair until her knees crowd against his, bringing her other hand to cover his on top of her own. “There’s more for you, Jon,” she says, and means it more than maybe anything she’s ever said before.

A dozen things flicker in his eyes. Sansa braces herself for an argument – it’s mostly all they do anymore – but he only closes his eyes as if in pain, then lifts her hand to press his lips to her knuckles for long enough that Sansa begins to count her heartbeats, _one, two, three, four, five, six,_ one for each of them, for every Stark child both here and gone.

“It’s late,” he says, when he’s lowered their hands again. “I should let you sleep.”

Sleep. It’s what she probably needs more than anything – Jon as well – but she knows she won’t be able to, not with everything still jangling around in her head with no one and nothing to chase it away, but she nods, knowing she has to try. Jon rises, his hand sliding free of hers, but Sansa catches him with both her hands.

“Wait,” she says. “Stay. Please.”

Sansa faced death not a day earlier. She held a blade in her hand and destroyed an undead monstrosity, barely able to do more than slash blindly and hope against hope she wouldn’t die herself. Yet somehow, asking Jon to stay feels like the bravest thing she’s ever done. Once she would have thought nothing of it. But that was when they only had each other, before everything had changed.

She expects him to shake his head, say that he can’t. Maybe to kiss her forehead in sweet regret before leaving her to her monsters. Instead he only nods after a moment’s hesitation, and Sansa knows he needs someone to chase it all away as much as she does.

He removes no more than his boots before he climbs onto her bed beside her, lying on top of the furs after she slides beneath them. There’s a bare hand’s breadth between them but to Sansa it feels like he might as well be on the other side of the world. For a moment, she regrets asking him to stay; being lonely is easier when she’s alone. But then he fumbles his hand over the top of the furs and manages to find her own beneath. He holds her hand like that, separated by the furs but still somehow close, and finally Sansa feels herself falling into sleep.

The scratching at the door startles her awake. Ghost, come to sleep with her, something he’d done more nights than not since Jon left. The fire has burned down to almost nothing, the bed empty beside her, and at first Sansa thinks Jon must have left once she fell asleep. She readies herself to rise and let Ghost in, but before she can she hears the door open and the unmistakable click of direwolf claws on the floor. Jon, still there.

“Tired of feasting, then?” Jon murmurs, though Sansa thinks the feast must have straggled to an end hours ago. Ghost huffs in response. For long moments, the only sounds are Ghost’s breathing and a bristly, rustling sound. Sansa can imagine Jon kneeling to give Ghost a brisk scratch, over his chest to his ruff and then along his sides, just the way Ghost likes, the two of them joined in silent communion. The familiar ache settles in Sansa’s heart, like something heavy falling into the void that Lady once occupied. How would it feel to still have her direwolf? Sansa can’t imagine. She’s known more time without her than she ever knew with her. Life would have been different, though, that much she knows. So very different.

Jon’s clothing rustles, as if he’s pushed to his feet. “You ready?” he asks Ghost in a low voice, and Sansa knows he’ll leave now, head back to his own rooms or possibly visit Daenerys in hers, seeking to fix whatever had been broken between them with sweet words and sweeter kisses. Maybe more. No man has ever sought to fix the damage he’d done to Sansa, with sweet kisses or otherwise. It makes her so sad she can hardly bear it, so bitter she can taste it on the back of her tongue, and she feigns continued sleep so she doesn’t have to hear him tell her he’s going.

When the door thumps closed, Sansa sucks in a breath, willing tears away, knowing that if she starts she may never stop. Claws click on the floor again, and knowing Jon left Ghost with her makes her want to weep all the more.

“Up.” Jon’s whispered command hits her like lightning. Suddenly the mattress jostles and dips as Ghost obediently jumps up, arranging himself tidily over the furs at Sansa’s feet. Jon’s weight follows, another dip and jostle, the soft drag of the furs as he pulls them over himself and settles himself for sleep. Sansa’s tears run hot, then, pooling in the wells of her ears before she turns her face to the side and blinks them away. They’re each of them fully clothed, she and Jon, and they shared a bed easily a hundred times before as they were growing up, yet it’s still somehow the most tender thing Sansa has ever experienced with a man.

Impulsively, she rolls towards him, eyes still closed as she clings to the safety of feigned sleep. When she lays her cheek on his shoulder and tucks herself close to his side, he only hesitates for a moment before he works his arm beneath her to pull her against him tightly, as if he needs her comfort as much as she needs his.

His breathing grows deep, even, the rise and fall of his chest a soothing rhythm under Sansa’s head. He smells of wine, the faint sourness of sweat, the smoke of the hearth, but it only makes him more real. It’s exactly what she needs. Tomorrow they’ll face a dawn they thought they might not live to see, and all that comes with it. But tonight, for now, all they have, all they _need_ is each other.

 

*

_ Title from Tired, by Langston Hughes _


End file.
